The value of the student’s question is supreme. The best initial response to a question is not to answer it, per se, but to validate it, protect it, support it, and make a space for it. Like a blossom just emerging, a question is vulnerable and del...
When we think of the word culture, obvious representations such as how to dress, eat, speak, and act like those around us come to mind. But learning culture is more than learning conformity to external patterns of behavior. Culture is also a system o...
Meeks was telling him about the value of work. He said that it had been his personal experience that if you wanted to get ahead, you had to work. He said this was the law of life and it was no way to get around it because it was inscribed on the huma...
In a society where rationality has ruled so long, the church frequently fails to see that in forsaking the weekly pursuit of the transcendent, we have given up the only ground that was uniquely ours in this world. In attempting to make the church som...
Just watch any husband arguing with his wife about something insignificant; listen to what they say and watch how their residual emotions manifest when the fight is over. It’s so formulaic and unsurprising that you wouldn’t dare re-create it in a...
Whenever an occasion arose in which she needed an opinion on something in the wider world, she borrowed her husband's. If this had been all there was to her, she wouldn't have bothered anyone, but as is so often the case with such women, she suffered...
The presence of the inner feeling of emptiness directs our attention to a past experience of guilt and to our inner feeling awareness of the cause in the past. We must be sensitive to that feeling and accept it in order to chase down the cause, ferre...
Charles Lathrop Pack, president of the American Tree Association, told how Rogers gave him advice in handling an educational campaign in tree planting. 'Will Rogers told me,' said Pack, 'that I was on the wrong track in trying to educate people to th...
Not everyone understands what a completely rational process this is, this maintenance of a motorcycle. They think it's some kind of "knack" or some kind of "affinity for machines" in operation. They are right, but the knack is almost purely a process...
He felt that institutions such as schools, churches, governments and political organizations of every sort all tended to direct thought for ends other than truth, for the perpetuation of their own functions, and for the control of individuals in the ...
Self-protection keeps you from love, Mr. Knightley-all love. I am so sad at how I've kept them at a distance-the Muirs, Alex, Father John, Kyle, Hannah...Anyone and everyone who has ever stood by me. I played God in our relationships. I determined th...
On the Bigotry of Culture: : it presented us with culture, with thought as something justified in itself, that is, which requires no justification but is valid by it's own essence, whatever its concrete employment and content maybe. Human life was to...
I had a dream about you. I was trying to dissect love like it was a frog, and you were trying to dissect a frog like it was love. I said we should team up and have sex, and you said, “Sure, I’ll have sex with you—for twenty bucks.” Geez! For ...
In the final analysis, what is it that we call popular, democratic power? Beyond the expressed will of the people, as it is supposedly formulated, there is no appeal; here we meet the absolute, the universal, the indivisible, and the immovable. There...
When examining evidence relevant to a given belief, people are inclined to see what they expect to see, and conclude what they expect to conclude. Information that is consistent with our pre-existing beliefs is often accepted at face value, whereas e...
Schizophrenia is just a catch-all term for forms of mental behaviour that we don’t understand. In the nineteenth century there was a term, melancholia, which we would now call bipolar depression… but all forms of sadness, unhappiness, maladaptati...
At the beach, fifty years later, the old man understands finally that much of what he disavowed in himself before recognizing its irretrievable value, most of the heartache he caused himself and those who chose to love him, came out of that repudiati...
Fairy tales in childhood are stepping stones throughout life, leading the way through trouble and trial. The value of fairy tales lies not in a brief literary escape from reality, but in the gift of hope that goodness truly is more powerful than evil...
The usual fiction – that the war would involve precision targeting and the careful avoidance of civilian deaths – was stated by Tony Blair at the beginning of the war. After similar bombing campaigns against Yugoslavia and Iraq, Blair was by now ...
This week, Zuma was quoted as saying, 'When the British came to our country, they said everything we are doing was barbaric, was wrong, inferior in whatever way.' But the serious critique of Zuma is not about who is a barbarian and who is civilised. ...
Do you want to be in your own story or on the outside writing about it? Everyone battles fear and uncertainty every day. However, the only failure in life is believing that your value relies on other people's approval or resources. The reality is thi...
